20140113

Taylor Reid

Longer No Longer

I’m no longer looking for the French lipstick.
I’m no longer worried about the premise.
I’m no longer looking for the power earrings
as day closes down like an escapee from the 90s.
You are no longer my wish for an outline
of yet another hypothesis, for order in the house.
You are no longer my spin of the day.

Here’s to a final long leisure in these suit-town suites.
Lapping entrees won’t replace that old time religion
as it once vibrated without batteries or belief, without beers
or biology. It made a sound but it wasn’t cheap.
You could privatise each bubble, krug by krug.
So we gave up caring about the masses of needs
and wants, our satin portfolios, our kiss-cold policies.

I could French you again, I could fund you again,
I could free the inner cheap shot I’d been saving,
along with the cheap sin, the cheap silver.
But no, I’ll fly away, earn points out of first class,
work off my dependence on some boulevard
named for a revolution never made.

An die Musik

‘death is so great’
it’s good to be in it
being dead surrounded
by leaves
believing I’m an axe
a murderer
here’s the book
all those words
believing in
themselves
and secretly hoping
for the absolute
‘death is so great’
better than any
sublime tasting
rock or river
the crisis of pulp
rolling out
of great death
I don’t have to be
old or young
simply madly truly
and greatly dead
free from the life
force and taxes
marks sky
rain buses wasps
stairs ages
fortune
death would be
even greater
with music
so it is
not so
greatly
great

Taylor Reid has worked at selling second-hand books, and other itinerant jobs involving the written word. Poems have been recently published in On Barcelona and 4W.